Off-farm work decisions on Dutch cash crop farms and the 1992 and Agenda 2000 CAP reforms

A double hurdle model of off‐farm work participation and off‐farm labour income was derived and estimated consistent with a farm household model. It was found that rationing and unexpected transaction costs inhibit farm households from participating in off‐farm work. The 1992 and the Agenda 2000 CAP reforms are most likely to increase the off‐farm employment of arable farm households, but its full effect cannot be realised because of inhibitions to enter off‐farm activities. Household and farm characteristics have different impacts on off‐farm work participation and on the level of off‐farm labour income.     

The Impact of Agricultural Extension and Roads on Poverty and Consumption Growth in Fifteen Ethiopian Villages

This article investigates whether public investments that led to improvements in road quality and increased access to agricultural extension services led to faster consumption growth and lower rates of poverty in rural Ethiopia. Estimating an Instrumental Variables model using Generalized Methods of Moments and controlling for household fixed effects, we find evidence of positive impacts with meaningful magnitudes. Receiving at least one extension visit reduces headcount poverty by 9.8 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 7.1 percentage points. Access to all-weather roads reduces poverty by 6.9 percentage points and increases consumption growth by 16.3 percentage points. These results are robust to changes in model specification and estimation methods.     

Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities

Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds of data on a cohort of children surveyed repeatedly between 2002 and 2013. We find a small but significant positive effect of the programme on both numeracy skills and vocabulary. This is driven mainly by children in households that had graduated (left) the programme just before 2013. We argue that this is at least partially related to time allocation: graduates of the programme spent more time in school than continuing beneficiaries. We also find evidence that the maths (though not language) improvement is more pronounced for boys.